Grand lineup hopes to keep momentum going

Last season was a special one for the city’s Grand Theatre: it marked a decade since the city started programming its own season; the rebranding of that city-run season to Grand OnStage; and, to top it all off, it was Canada’s sesquicentennial.

The city’s Performing Arts manager, Jayson Duggan, was able to slot a number of high-profile Canadian musicians — Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Jann Arden, and Tom Cochrane, among others — into its always-eclectic lineup.

“The 10th anniversary year was obviously a big year for us, and we were able to book a lot of marquee Canadian artists who were all out touring in celebration of what was happening around the country,” Duggan said. “And so, for sure, a lot of thought went into that.”

So this season Duggan faced the task of keeping the momentum going from last season, which saw a record number of season-ticket subscribers sign on.

The 2018-19 season, which was revealed to subscribers a couple of weeks ago and everyone else this week, will see a number of familiar names (Gino Vannelli, Gowan), subscribers’ requests (Jesse Cook, Serena Ryder), returning favourites (Classic Albums Live, Just for Laughs, The Nutcracker), and a heap of new ones, too.

It’s about striking a balance so that the money-making shows support the “riskier programming that we undertake,” Duggan said.

The upcoming season is “probably a little bit more similar to previous years,” suggested Duggan, “where our patrons have to dig a little bit deeper into the content because there may be certainly more names on the list that aren’t immediately familiar but just as equally entertaining and exciting, and, hopefully, as appealing.”

Duggan is hoping subscribers will take the occasional leap of faith with a show and be rewarded for it.

“I would hope that there’s a sense that with the Grand OnStage tag there’s a quality to that program and there’s a comfort level of what we’re offering,” he said.

As an example, Duggan pointed to season brochure cover subject Cirque Eloize Saloon, which he saw Off-Broadway in New York.

“They’re amazing cirque performers, but they also sing and they dance and play musical instruments,” he said. “There’s a backing soundtrack and it’s classic country. You wouldn’t think of a cirque performance at the Grand, but I’m sure it will be an amazing performance.”

He’s also excited to see Indian singer Anandi Bhattacharya, accompanied by her slide guitar-playing father, Debashish, and her tabla master uncle Subhasis, perform as part of the theatre’s world music lineup.

“For me, the world music program has always been exciting to put together because I know I’m going to feature artists who are not familiar to our community but are really superstars in their fields or their country, and I love bringing them to the stage,” Duggan said.

He’s also excited about February’s “Rumble: The Concert,” which tells the story of how Indigenous artists influenced various music genres and will feature Juno award winner Derek Miller.

“It’s a really interesting program and another one I think our community will respond to.”

It’s also not the only Indigenous-focused performance: the season will also feature the dance program “Trace” from Red Sky Performance, and the play Cottagers & Indians from celebrated playwright Drew Hayden Taylor.

Of course, many of the boxes of seasons past have been checked. For music, there’s jazz (Adonis Puentes, Canadian Jazz All-Stars, John Pizzarelli), country (Brett Kissel, Legendary Ladies of Country), blues (Steve Strongman, Robert Cray), and pop and rock (Royal Wood, I Mother Earth, Finger Eleven).

And no Grand season is complete without some comedy (Jeremy Hotz, This is That) and dance (Peggy Baker Dance Projects’ “Who we are in the dark,” Gandini Juggling and Dance’s “Sigma”). There will even be an illusionist (Outerbridge) and a human-sized puppet show about TV show The Golden Girls (“Thank you for being a friend”).

And while the season has been announced, there will still be more shows to announce, Duggan promised, that can’t be announced yet because the details are still being finalized.

“A lot of performances might be targeted toward a younger demographic, which is something that we like to offer,” he said.

“Typically, the cycle on those tours is much shorter than the booking cycle that we have for our presenting season, so where I’m working 12 and 18 months in advance for a lot of the artists that are in our season, some of the out-of-season shows, or the add-on shows, have a six-month or eight-month turnaround time from conversation to performance time.”

The season will also offer family-friendly shows “The Rainbow Fish” by the Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia and the “Prehistoric Aquarium Adventure” from Erth, the same company that brought the popular “Dinosaur Zoo.”

And the city will continue to build upon its successful education program. Typically, the family-friendly act performs for the general public on Sunday and then for schoolchildren the day after. Duggan said the response from educators and school boards about these school-day shows was “quite overwhelming.”

“We put a lot of time into what those programs are that we offer, and the grades that we cover with those programs, and really trying to make that appealing to the schools to getting students into the Grand Theatre and getting students familiar with the facility and the live experience and the content that we offer,” he said.

And it’s not just the Grand’s educational program that he’s hearing good things about.

“The response from our subscribers has been really overwhelming this season as well,” he said, “which I think is a carryover from the experience that many of our new patrons, new subscribers may have had last year at the shows that we offered.”